Hereward the Wake

"Hereward" redirects here. For the college in Coventry, see Hereward College.

Hereward the Wake (c. 1035 – 1072), known in his own times as Hereward the Outlaw or Hereward the Exile, was an 11th-century leader of local resistance to the Norman conquest of England.

Hereward's base was in the Isle of Ely, and according to legend he roamed The Fens, covering North Cambridgeshire, Southern Lincolnshire and West Norfolk, leading popular opposition to William the Conqueror. The name Hereward is composed of Old English roots here = army, and weard = guard, and is cognate with Old High German Heriwart and modern German Heerwart. The title "the Wake" (meaning "watcher") was popularly assigned to him many years after his death.

Sources of our information

Several primary sources exist for Hereward's life, though the accuracy of their information is difficult to evaluate. They are the version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written at Peterborough Abbey (ASC), the Domesday Book (DB), the Liber Eliensis (Book of Ely) and, much the most detailed, the Gesta Herewardi (Gesta). To a small extent, they are sometimes mutually contradictory. This probably indicates, as the preface to the Gesta suggests, that conflicting oral legends about Hereward were already current in the Fenland in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. In addition, there may be some partisan bias in the early writers: the notice of Hereward in the Peterborough Chronicle, for instance, was written in a monastery which he was said to have sacked, some fifty years after the date of the raid. On the other hand, the original version of the Gesta was written in explicit praise of Hereward,; much of its information was provided by men who knew him personally, principally, if the preface is to be believed, a former colleague in arms and member of his father's former household named Leofric the Deacon.

These primary sources have each been published more than once, with one form or another of commentary. The form in which they are generally available is therefore a secondary source. This has to be taken with care especially where they are published as a translation of the original Latin or Old English into modern language, without a transcription of the original.

There is a wide variety of secondary sources of information, but they must be treated with caution: the popular, romanticised view of Hereward often has little basis in the medieval sources, owing more to the fictional depiction by Charles Kingsley and later authors.

Life and legend

Hereward's birth is conventionally dated as 1035/6 because the Gesta Herewardi indicates that he was first exiled in 1054 in his 18th year. However, since the account in the Gesta of the early part of his exile (in Scotland, Cornwall and Ireland) contains fantastic elements which suggest it is largely fictitious, it is hard to know if we can trust this. Peter Rex, in his 2005 biography of Hereward, points out that the campaigns he is reported to have fought in the neighbourhood of Flanders seem to have begun around 1063, and suggests that Hereward in fact went to Flanders - meaning that, if he was 18 at the time of his exile, he was born in 1044/5. But this would be based on the assumption that the early part of the story is largely fictitious.

Partly because of the sketchiness of evidence for his existence, his life has become a magnet for speculators and amateur scholars. The earliest references to his parentage, in the Gesta, make him the son of Edith, a descendent of Oslac of York, and Leofric of Bourne, nephew of Ralph the Staller. Alternatively, it has also been argued that Leofric, Earl of Mercia and his wife Lady Godiva were Hereward's real parents. There is no evidence for this, and Abbot Brand of Peterborough, stated to have been Hereward's uncle, does not appear to have been related to either Leofric or Godiva. It is improbable that if Hereward were a member of this prominent family, his parentage would not be a matter of record. Some modern research suggests him to have been Anglo-Danish with a Danish father, Asketil: since Brand is also a Danish name it makes sense that the Abbot may have been Asketil's brother. Hereward's apparent ability to call on Danish support may also support this theory.

His place of birth is supposed to be in or near Bourne in Lincolnshire. Domesday Book shows that a man named Hereward held lands in the parishes of Witham on the Hill and Barholm with Stow in the south-western corner of Lincolnshire as a tenant of Peterborough Abbey; prior to his exile, Hereward had also held lands as a tenant of Croyland Abbey at Crowland, eight miles east of Market Deeping in the neighbouring fenland. In those times it used to be a boggy and marshy area. Since the holdings of abbeys could be widely dispersed across parishes, the precise location of his personal holdings are uncertain, but were certainly somewhere in south Lincolnshire.

According to the Gesta Herewardi, Hereward was exiled at the age of eighteen for disobedience to his father and disruptive behaviour, and he was declared an outlaw by Edward the Confessor. It has been suggested that, at the time of the Norman invasion of England, he was in exile in Europe, working as a successful mercenary for the Count of Flanders, Baldwin V, and that he then returned to England.

Map showing Isle of Ely surrounded by water
Joan Blaeu (1648) Regiones Inundatae

In 1069 or 1070 the Danish king Sweyn Estrithson sent a small army to try to establish a camp on the Isle of Ely. They were joined by many, including Hereward. His first act was to storm and sack Peterborough Abbey in 1070, in company with local men and Swein's Danes: his justification is said to have been that he wished to save the Abbey's treasures and relics from the Normans.

In 1071, Hereward and many others made a desperate stand on the Isle of Ely against the Conqueror's rule. Both the Gesta Herewardi and the Liber Eliensis claim that the Normans made a frontal assault, aided by a huge, mile-long, timber causeway, but that this sank under the weight of armour and horses. It is said that the Normans, probably led by one of William's knights named Belasius (Belsar), then bribed the monks of the island to reveal a safe route across the marshes, resulting in Ely's capture. Hereward is said to have escaped with some of his followers into the wild fenland and to have continued his resistance.

There is extant evidence for an ancient earthwork south of Aldreth at the junction of the old fen causeway and Iram Drove. This circular feature, known as Belsar's Hill, is a potential site for a fort, built by William, from which to attack Ely and Hereward. There were perhaps as few as four causeways onto the Isle itself, with this being the southerly route from London and the likely route of William's army. In Kingsley's 1865 Hereward the Wake, the name of the knight who bribed the monks to gain access to the isle is given as Belasius, and the feature is noted in Lysons' Magna Britannia (1808 vol2, pt1, Cambridgeshire).

There are conflicting accounts about Hereward's life after the fall of Ely. The twelfth-century Gesta Herewardi (of unknown authorship; first published by Thomas Wright in 1839 and translated by W. Sweeting for the 1895 edition), says Hereward was eventually pardoned by William and lived the rest of his life in relative peace. Geoffrey Gaimar, in his Estoire des Engleis, says instead that Hereward lived for some time as an outlaw in the Fens, but that as he was on the verge of making peace with William, he was set upon and killed by a group of Norman knights. It is possible that Hereward received no such pardon and went into exile never to be heard from again; this was in fact the fate of many prominent Englishmen after the Conquest.

Epithet "the Wake"

The epithet "the Wake" is first attested in the late fourteenth-century Chronicon Angliae Petriburgense, ascribed by its first editor Joseph Sparke to the otherwise unknown John of Peterborough. There are two main theories as to the origin of the tag. Popular legend interprets it as meaning "the watchful", and supposes that Hereward acquired it when, with the help of his servant Martin Lightfoot, he foiled an assassination attempt during a hunting party by a group of knights jealous of his popularity. However, it appears more likely that the name was given to him by the Wake family, the Norman landowners who gained Hereward's land in Bourne (Lincolnshire) after his death, in order to imply a family connection and therefore legitimise their claim to the land.

Legacy

• HMS Hereward was an H-class destroyer of the Royal Navy commissioned on 9 December 1936.
• "Hereward" is the motto of No. 2 Squadron RAF. They are based at RAF Marham in Norfolk and their crest contains a Wake knot.
• BR standard class 7 (otherwise known as the "Britannia Class") locomotive No 70037 carried the name "Hereward the Wake".
• There is a long-distance footpath through the Cambridgeshire fenland from Peterborough to Ely, called the Hereward Way.
• From 1980 to 2009, a local radio station broadcasting from Peterborough was called Hereward FM, before being relaunched as Heart Peterborough.
• Hampstead has a preparatory school for boys called Hereward House School.

In popular culture

Folktales and fiction

• Some of the legends about Hereward were incorporated into later legends about Robin Hood.
• Thomas Bulfinch wrote about Hereward the Wake in his work: The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes (1855) .
• Charles Kingsley's novel Hereward the Wake: "last of the English" (London: Macmillan, 1866) is a highly romanticised account of Hereward's exploits, and makes him the son of Earl Leofric of Mercia and the ancestor of the family of Wake.
• Jack Trevor Story wrote a long dramatised life of Hereward for one of Tom Boardman's boys' annuals.
• Cold Heart, Cruel Hand: a novel of Hereward the Wake (2004) is a novel by Laurence J. Brown.
• Hereward the Wake makes a significant appearance in Keeper of the Crystal Spring (1998) by Naomi & Deborah Baltuck, a historical romance/adventure set in a predominantly Saxon community 20 years after the Battle of Hastings.
• An Endless Exile (2004), by Mary Lancaster, is a historical novel based on Hereward's life.
• Hereward is portrayed as a prototype Robin Hood, but also a drug-taking, psychopathic arsonist, in Mike Ripley's novel The Legend of Hereward the Wake (2007).
• Henry Treece's children's novel Man with a Sword was published by the Bodley Head, London, in 1962: Hereward is the hero of the story, in the first episode he is the champion of the Empress Gunhilda of Germany and at the end his life extends past the death of William I.
• Marcus Pitcaithly's epic Hereward trilogy (Hereward: Sons of the White Dragon (2008), Hereward: The Fury of the Northmen (2009), and Hereward: Doom of Battle (2012)) incorporates legendary figures from the same region such as Tom Hickathrift, the Toadmen of Wisbech, Black Shuck, and the phantom knight of Wandlebury.
• Conquest by Stewart Binns (2011) is a historical novel covering the whole of Hereward's life in dramatic and bloody detail.
• Hereward by James Wilde (2011), a "brutal novel of revenge", first in a projected trilogy, with the next two titles, The Devil's Army and End of Days to be published in the future.

Film and television

• The BBC made a 16-episode TV series in 1965 entitled Hereward the Wake, based on Kingsley's novel: Hereward was portrayed by actor Alfred Lynch. However, not one episode of this BBC series has survived, according to the archive records.
• Hancock's Half Hour - Sid James claims Hereward stayed at Hancock's house as a ploy to get the house renovated by the National Trust.
• Brian Blessed portrayed Hereward in the TV drama Blood Royal: William the Conqueror (1990).

Music

• Progressive rock band Pink Floyd referred to Hereward in the track "Let There Be More Light" (1968), in which a psychedelic vision at Mildenhall reveals the 'living soul of Hereward the Wake'. Lyrics by Roger Waters.
• He appears in the lyrics of the 1970 track "Darkness" by progressive group Van der Graaf Generator from their album The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other. Lyrics by Peter Hammill.
• Hereward is the subject of the track "Rebel of the Marshlands" by metal band Forefather, in their 2005 album Ours Is the Kingdom.

See also

• Courteenhall home of the Wake family which claim descent from Hereward.
• Robin Hood
• Hereward FM

Bibliography

• Gesta Herewardi Saxoni, ed. T. D. Hardy and C. T. Martin, Lestoire des Engles solum la translaction maistre Geffrei Gaimar. (Rolls Series; 91.) 2 vols: vol 1. London, 1888. pp. 339–404 // tr. M. Swanton, “The Deeds of Hereward” In Medieval Outlaws. Twelve Tales in Modern English Translation, ed. T. H. Ohlgren. 2nd ed. West Lafayette, 2005. 28-99.
• Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake, Liber Eliensis. (Camden Society; ser. 3; vol. 92.) London, 1962 // tr. J. Fairweather. Liber Eliensis: a History of the Isle of Ely from the Seventh Century to the Twelfth. Woodbridge, 2005.
• Rex, Peter The English Resistance: the Underground War Against the Normans, Stroud: Tempus ISBN 0-7524-2827-6, chapters 8, 9 and 10 contain new data on his family.
• Hereward, together with De Gestis Herewardi Saxonis; researched and compiled in the 12th century by monastery historians, revised and rewritten in modern English by Trevor A. Bevis, (1982), Pub. Westrydale Press (reissue of 1979 ed), ISBN 0-901680-16-8.
• Bremmer, R. H., Jr. "The Gesta Herewardi: transforming an Anglo-Saxon into an Englishman", in: T. Summerfield & K. Busby (eds.), People and Texts; relationships in medieval literature: studies presented to Erik Kooper. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2007, pp. 29–42.

Fiction

• Hereward: Sons of the White Dragon, by Marcus Pitcaithly, pub. 2008. ISBN 978-0-9556864-0-5.
• Hereward: The Fury of the Northmen, by Marcus Pitcaithly, pub. 2009. ISBN 978-0-9556864-1-2
• An Endless Exile, by Mary Lancaster, 2004. Paperback ISBN 1-84319-272-1, eBook ISBN 1-84319-125-3
• "The Last Englishman: The Story of Hereward the Wake", by Hebe Weenolsen, pub. 1952
• Man With a Sword, by Henry Treece, 1962.
• The Saxon Tapestry by Sile Rice, a historical fantasy. Pub. Hodder & Stoughton, 1991
• "Cold Heart, Cruel Hand: A Novel Of Hereward The Wake and The Fen Rebellion of 1070-1071" by Laurence J. Brown, pub. 2004
• "Brainbiter: The Saga of Hereward the Wake" by Jack Ogden, pub. 2007
• "The Legend of Hereward the Wake" by Mike Ripley, pub. 2007
• The Camp of Refuge, by Charles MacFarlane, pub. 1844.
• Hereward the Wake, by Charles Kingsley, pub. 1866 (see below for text from Project Gutenberg).
• Conquest - 1066 The Year of Destiny, by Stewart Binns, pub. 2011 by Penguin.
• Hereward, a historical novel by James Wilde, pub. 2011.

External links

• Hereward the Wake — English translation of Gesta Herewardi at River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester
• Charles Kingsley, Hereward, the Last of the English, 1865, at Project Gutenburg
• David Roffe, Hereward 'the Wake' and the Barony of Bourne: a Reassessment of a Fenland Legend, an academic article, pub. 1994
• Geoff Boxell "Hereward the Wake"
• BBC documentary on Hereward (streaming audio)